Rant: N-Strike Elite: Domestic retail gets shafted

Image courtesy of Basic Nerf. 

Traditionally, the 9-9 launch date has been around for Nerf to bring out something very cool. We've seen the Raider, the Stampede, a WHOLE line in the Vortex series, and now this year we're officially waiting on the new N-Strike Elite series. Something that has been occurring quite frequently these days is the premature release of new products well before the launch date.

Forget the product leaks that we got our hands on in the past, I'm simply talking of what's occurring in stores. This year we've already had sightings of the Retaliator and Rampage blasters readily available to buy more than 2 months before launch. More importantly, e-tailers are getting in on this, with giants like Amazon already making them available to buy online, AND with international shipping.

 I have no doubt that in the past few days, Amazon.com would have gotten a significant spike in Nerf orders from overseas. Given the US models are apparently the ones that boast the higher performance ranges than the detuned Australian versions, I can imagine Nerf gun early adopters all over the country would have slapped down their credit cards and picked themselves up a piece of the full strength N-Strike Elite pie and will be shooting much further and in turn much sooner than the 9-9 date. This might be great news for the US market, but it's gotta be a kick in the pants for the already flailing domestic retail one.


 Retail lately has always been crying foul of online sales; the lack of GST charged on imported items means many local sellers cannot compete with imported grey goods. The thing is, THIS is a whole different issue right here. Because buying Nerf locally IS cheaper than importing from overseas given the shipping costs. People buy online though, because they can get, what they want whereas Australia, doesn't have the gear. Not yet anyway.

Officially by Australian intel.. doesn't exist:D

Our stores don't have the N-Strike Elite blasters yet- ok I get that, but there are a lot of other weird quirks that have caused many an Australian Nerfer to seek kit from overseas. We never officially got the Quick 16- in fact we were about a year late in getting Dart Tag kit anyway. We were very slow to get N-Force and even now it's barely visible. Vortex disc refills took ages to make it to shelves- The Jolt came in late.. In this day and age, the internet basically lets us know about anything new, and if it's available SOMEWHERE in the world, people will go to lengths to acquire it. Companies may want to have control over distribution and I get that, but if your finger's not on the pulse, you'll lose business and you can cry foul all you want, but you cannot blame a customer for just wanting to buy what they want, and if you don't want to take their money, someone overseas will. 


 The one saving grace is Nerf early adopters tend to buy more than one unit of their favourite blasters, so our local market won't miss out completely. The thing about Nerf though is once someone gets into it, they very quickly move into the affectionato fan category from the casual player category, which means the NEXT time they purchase, they will be a lot more aware and less easy to impress. When I first got into writing about toy guns, the Nerf shelf of any toy store was pretty small. I remember the midnight sales at Kmart from several years ago where the whole Nerf range on shelf could be easily cleaned out by 5 die hard fans with a shopping cart.

Pyragon. Want want.. and will get. Overseas probably.

We've definitely come a long way from then, but I still believe we in Australia really needs to put more work into their marketing and distribution strategies. Get the word out sooner, and be more proactive rather than just wait for the US to deliver information and product.  Maybe we're not big enough a market to host launch parties and send out press kits to bloggers, but even just keep on top of information and to give us all a little bit more than just relying on the free publicity of die hard Nerf fans to have to trawl the internet and call stores constantly to learn of when products are going to be released. This is one area of domestic retail that CAN fight back- I'm not seeing anyone ordering Lumitrons and Rayvens overseas anymore:)